


Terrified the Life

by GirlonaBridge



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst, F/F, Masturbation, Serena's POV, everyone apart from Serena makes only minor appearances, fantasies, stream of consciousness mostly, struggling to accept sexuality, unwise use of alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:59:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8021836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlonaBridge/pseuds/GirlonaBridge
Summary: "I've never been more than friends with a woman before and you've terrified the life out of me."A delve into Serena's mind, thought processes and reactions in the time between The Kiss and The Lift Scene.





	Terrified the Life

Thursday 10.17pm  
Bernie’s pager bleeps.  
A door flunks somewhere.  
Sound returns. The world returns.

 

Thursday 11.43pm  
Serena hovers at the end of the corridor to ITU. She doesn’t need to go back into Fletch. There is no point in it. He won’t stir. There will be no difference since she left him ten minutes ago to change into her outdoor clothes, supposedly to leave the hospital and go home. But her feet brought her back here. Just to see. Just to check.  
She turns away. This is not about her. Fletch is in the best possible care.  
A movement in the air tells her a door has opened behind her. She jerks back again. Alert.  
It’s Bernie. Leaning on the half open door, heavy with exhaustion, still in scrubs. Meeting Serena’s eyes with something of that hopelessness that had drawn Serena to her on the floor outside theatre earlier. And a wariness in her whole frame. Like someone trying to approach a wild animal.  
‘No change.’ Bernie’s voice is so soft it barely reaches her. Something tightens in Serena’s middle. She doesn’t want to ask herself if it’s her stomach or her chest. She nods, tightly.  
‘You should get some sleep.’ Bernie inclines her head, as if to motion Serena in the direction of home.  
Another tight nod. Oh God, is that all she is capable of? This isn’t what she means to do, how she means to be. But then, how does she mean to be? She has no idea.  
‘You too,’ she manages, voice unnaturally brittle.  
Bernie shifts her weight, slides her hands into her trouser pockets, still leaning on the open door. She drops her head and sighs. Then lifts her eyes to Serena’s again. She offers her the tiniest of almost smiles, a faint tugging of cheek muscles at the sides of her mouth, tilt of lips, merest brightening of eyes. This time it is definitely Serena’s chest that aches and she can’t help her lips part and eyes warm in response.  
Then she flees. 

 

Friday 12.28am  
Serena clicks her front door shut with exaggerated care. Jason is asleep. She is behaving like she is drunk. Jason will probably be asleep. But she hasn’t had a drop. Yet. Jason had better be asleep. She pauses, listens, checks for lights. Often, of course, he isn’t asleep when she gets home, even when she is late. His routine allows for late night binges of gaming or research or whatever technical and incomprehensible things he does with computers in his bedroom. And often he wants to share his progress. But tonight everything is still. Quiet. Dim. Serena breathes out heavily. Thank goodness.  
She toes her shoes, dumps bag and coat, and pads through to the kitchen in the semi-darkness. She knows her way more than well enough to find a bottle, a glass, pour, and head through to the living room, collapse on the sofa. She drinks deeply. Another huge sigh. Her eyes close as she sips again.  
Bernie’s lips against hers. The softness and firmness of her.  
Serena snaps her eyes open. Her heart pounds. She drinks again. This is ridiculous. Her shoulders are knotted tight, her stomach churning. It’s Fletch. She tells herself firmly. It’s Fletch she is worried about. He is fighting for his life in an induced coma and he is the reason she is so scared. The only reason. She sweeps a hand through her hair.  
Bernie’s hand on her neck. Bernie’s hand catching the ends of her hair. Bernie’s hand grabbing and clutching and pulling her closer. The solid warmth of her shifting against her.  
Serena swallows hard. This is not happening. She drains her wine, casts about her for the bottle to refill, silently curses when she realises she left it in the kitchen. Slowly, she pushes to her feet and all at once tiredness envelopes her. It has been such a long damn day. Her feet shuffle on the carpet, lino, carpet again. This time she groans as she falls into the sofa. Wearily she tucks her legs up and pours more wine, careful not to let her hand shake.  
‘Fletch is going to be fine.’ She says it out loud to make it more believable. ‘We did the best we could for him. We are the best and we did the best we could.’  
She closes her eyes and makes herself run through the surgery again, the location of the wounds, the blood, the decisions they made, the pace they set, the staples and sutures. Could they have been faster? Could they have done different? Could they have missed anything? No. Could they have worked any better as a team?  
Bernie’s eyes meeting hers over their masks. Her hands anticipating Bernie’s next action before she moved. No need to speak or nod, the two of them working swiftly and smoothly. Together. The wave of exhaustion when their shared concentration was broken.  
Serena is hot and tense and aching in more ways than she cares to examine. She kicks the arm of the sofa in frustration. She should not be thinking this. She is not thinking this way. She has never thought. Never been… She is not.  
They are friends.  
She breathes in deep, forces her shoulders down, drives the air right out of her lungs until they are empty, inhales again, deliberately slow. This is a stress reaction. It is perfectly natural and to be expected and she will control it.  
She practically slurps the rest of the glass of wine. Still she focuses on her breathing. Nice and deep and calm. That’s better. Fletch is going to be fine. She leans her heavy head back into the sofa cushion. And Bernie and she are friends. 

 

Friday 2.52am  
Serena wishes she could cry. Cry like a teenager, like a child, like she has cried at her very lowest moments – heavy, noisy sobs that hurt and show the world how much you hurt, and help get that hurt out a little bit. But they are the kind of tears that only come unbidden. And she can’t quite let herself believe this is worth those tears, that she deserves them at this moment. Because it isn’t Fletch. She made it to bed several hours ago and it isn’t Fletch, thoughts and pictures, scents, sensations of Fletch that have been keeping her awake ever since. It isn’t Fletch that she has run through myriad conversations with, each one breaking down after a couple of lines or tangling tortuously into the next attempt. It isn’t Fletch who is keeping her tossing her duvet aside, twisting and turning in futile attempts to find a cool patch in the bed, to get away from her brain. It really isn’t Fletch.  
It’s Bernie.

 

Friday 8.18am  
Serena has been skirting around the ward looking over her shoulder for half an hour when she realises that Bernie is off today. She is sitting at her desk when she remembers to check the duty roster. She drops her head in her hands in relief. There’s nothing going on. Nothing to talk about.  
She just needs to decide how she’s going to not talk about it before she sees her again. That’s all.

 

Friday 11.23am  
That’s not all. She has to work out how she’s not going to think about her.

 

Friday 2.34pm  
Serena is in the middle of a hurried bite of lunch when it occurs to her that Bernie might call in to see how Fletch is doing today. She chokes. Catches herself. Forces herself to finish chewing what now tastes like an expanding lump of sawdust. She can’t stomach the rest.  
It’s back to looking over the shoulder and round every corner.

Friday 3.41pm  
It’s not just that either. Serena feels like the world is too bright, too sharp today, like people are coming at her in some weird kind of focus. Familiar people aren’t so bad but even them, she finds herself watching her behaviour, guarding her looks, second-guessing how a gesture or a touch could be interpreted.  
Raf comes in for a quick visit. She’s been up to Fletch’s room almost a dozen times today but she still pounces on him for the latest news. Stable. Good. Same.  
He talks about the kids and her heart aches for them, for him. She forgets herself for a minute and is absorbed in everything Raf needs to talk about. But when she reaches out to give a comforting rub on his arm as he is leaving, something stops her. She shrugs the feeling off at once and pats him anyway but her hand lands awkwardly, too firm, and the moment is uncomfortable.  
Later, she does the same with Morven. It’s totally normal for her to give Morven’s shoulder a squeeze. Comforting. She knows she’s feeling awful, having it harder than any of them. She only wants to comfort the girl. But how does it look? How does it seem? Is this what any woman would do? Any straight woman.  
In the end her hand hovers too long and she snatches it back, mutters something instead.

 

Friday 5.08pm  
She is heading out of the hospital before she allows herself to wonder how Bernie is, if she is still feeling guilty, what it would be like to comfort her. Again.  
She slams a door on those thoughts. It was comforting her that got her into this mess.

 

Friday 11.43pm  
Twenty-four hours later and it’s still Bernie. An early night had seemed like such a good idea until she got into bed, switched the light out and found herself alone with her thoughts. All those busy busy thoughts that had been chasing her all day, just lying in wait.  
Let’s try this again. Sort it out once and for all. There has to be a way to clear this up, nice and simple. Then we can go back to how we were. Nice and simple. Nice and calm.  
There is no need for her heart to start racing again. She just needs to get her tactics in order.

 

Saturday 2.58am  
Option 1.  
I’m sorry but I’m really not like that. I… I… I mean like you. I’m not like you. I mean I am like you in a lot of ways. But not in that way. I don’t… like… I mean I did like… obviously... but only that one time, that one moment… it was all in the moment… I don’t want.  
But I do want.  
No

 

Saturday 3.13am  
Option 2.  
You see, I think we should be professional about this. Adult. It was a kiss. What’s a kiss? What’s a kiss between friends?  
That wasn’t a friendly kiss.  
Well, we’re both women of the world. We’ve been around a bit, tried a lot of things…  
You’ve never tried that. Women. Her.  
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

 

Saturday 3.49am  
Option 3.  
How dare you take advantage of me like that? If there is any more of this… this… this nonsense, I will be forced to make a complaint of unprofessional conduct and… and… sexual harassment.  
But you kissed her back.  
Oh God no.  
I could never admit that to anyone else.  
I could never stand the pain in her eyes, the betrayal… her eyes… I couldn’t… couldn’t…  
Looking into her eyes, I would just…  
I’d want to…  
Nonononononononononononono

 

Saturday 4.16am  
Option 4?  
It’s Bernie. And Bernie is her friend. One of her best friends. Certainly her best friend at work. She can talk to Bernie. She can tell her the truth.  
No not the truth.  
What is the truth?  
What, Serena Campbell is the truth about how you are feeling?  
Confused.  
Yes.  
Scared? Yes. Very scared.  
But why?  
It was just a kiss. Other people have kissed you before when you didn’t want them to and you’ve dealt with it, you’ve moved on. You’ve even managed to stay friends with some of them, the ones you would have wanted to be friends with anyway.  
But you did want it.  
Oh that’s the scared part – heart racing, stomach twisting, head rushing scared.  
But why? So what?  
Other people have kissed you before when you wanted them to. And that’s taken you to all sorts of places. All sorts.  
No not those sorts.  
But yes. Because she remembers clinging, pulling, snatching at Bernie’s clothes and wishing she could get closer, because in the breathless pause between the first kiss and all the others she was dizzy with desire, because being wanted that intensely, that passionately, is the biggest turn on, because they had only just begun and there is so much more they could do.  
Why not?  
Because she is a woman. And that would make Serena Campbell… well, what would it make her? She’s not even sure. Even letting her mind start to form the words sends her into a spiral of panic. That’s not her. She’s never been. She can’t start now.  
She’ll make one more attempt to sleep by reciting all the bones in the human body.  
Distal phalanges of the foot, intermediate phalanges of the foot, proximal phalanges of the foot, metacarpals…

 

Saturday 9.36am  
Jason’s morning racket drags Aunty Serena out of bed to the crucial mission of locating the new tube of toothpaste. And once she’s up, she’s up. The first of two days off. She makes coffee. She makes plans. Cleaning. Shopping. Quiz shows for Jason. Making a dent in the enormous pile of washing and ironing that always awaits her. That should keep her mind off… things. At least throughout the day.  
She will pop into the hospital later to check on Fletch. Half an hour at the longest. She will not worry about bumping into anybody in particular because today is also her day off.  
Maybe she’ll take Jason with her just in case.

 

Saturday 11.27pm  
Tonight, Serena has a plan. When Jason has gone to bed, she hunts out her cheapest bottles of red wine. Lines them up. She drinks the first one by midnight, forcing herself to stare at a film on the telly. Mindless. The second one takes her a little longer. She has to fight her thoughts more as the alcohol loosens the control she has battled for all day. Her hands shake when she tries to open the third but she struggles through. Abandoning her glass after a wobbly attempt spills a generous amount over the kitchen counter, she tucks the bottle tight against her body and sways back to the sofa. She necks as much of it as she can before it starts to taste sour. Even then she forces another few mouthfuls down.  
There. Try thinking straight now she tells her treacherous mind. Try thinking about her now. Ha. Try thinking anything.  
She crashes heavily to sleep against the arm of the sofa.

 

Sunday 6.02am  
Serena’s stomach heaves as she picks up the not-quite-empty bottle, wipes last night’s spillage, scrubs harder and harder at the stain it left. This morning her brain has lots of names for her.  
Stupid. Middle-aged. Pathetic. Self-absorbed. Slob. Disgrace. Psycho. Loser. Queer.

 

Sunday 9.15am  
Hangover cure. Breakfast. More hangover cure. She’s feeling a lot better. The self-hatred comes from the bottle. She knows this, now, with squinty bright sunlight sneaking through the blinds, Jason crunching industriously through a giant bowl of cornflakes, intermittently flicking pages of the book on the table in front of him, a gentle draught through the back door ridding the house of lingering smells of her binge. She does not hate herself and she is not a bad person. She will have a nice, relaxing, family Sunday with Jason. Maybe they will go for a walk. 

 

Monday 2.38am  
It’s the fourth practically sleepless night in a row and tomorrow she has to face Bernie again. Serena still doesn’t have a plan.  
Fletch is doing well, as well as can be expected, doing what he ought to be. Which is about the only time she’s ever been able to say that about him. Serena attempts a dry chuckle. It sounds odd and lifeless in the dark bedroom.  
She supposes she ought to be thankful for the shift patterns which have given her three days to think about what to do, what to say, how to deal. But it’s been three days of her mind torturing her with possible conversations, potential outcomes, questions. Three days of continuous, low-level anxiety spiking in panic at anything that reminds her.  
She is too old for this. Too tired. Except, apparently, she’s not.

 

Monday 4.26am  
Serena gives up.  
One little part of her gives up, gives in. It’s just a stress reliever. She has to do something to stop this wretched wriggling around the bed. It’s just a physical release, that’s all she needs. If she can stop the burning, craving, sensation it will be one less distraction. Then maybe she can get at least a couple of hours sleep. It’s just masturbation. Nothing to be ashamed of.  
And it has absolutely nothing to do with Bernie Wolfe.  
She won’t even think about her. No. She’ll resort to a really ancient fantasy involving George Clooney, a deserted theatre bay, an unbelievable plethora of rose petals.  
Stupid. Teenaged.  
But a real body, on the floor of theatre, hips pressed tight, knee almost digging in her stomach, getting in the way, if she could just shift her position, get that knee…  
No.  
Change the location. An open rooftop, sticky night heat, somewhere exotic, a blanket and a bottle of champagne.  
Hot is good. Hot is what she needs. But champagne? Shiraz is better any day. Bernie would buy her Shiraz. Lock eyes with her over the glasses. Toast and drink. Swallow. The delicate skin of her throat. How would it taste? How would the wine taste in her mouth, on her lips, her tongue, mingling with…  
No stop it.  
Serena’s breathing is faster, heavier, she moves her hand hard, harder. Drags her mind back. This will hurt if it has to, she has to do something.  
Never mind props. Just skin, kisses, fucking, body. Male. Man. Doesn’t matter who. A bit of every man she’s ever had sex with, ever fantasised about. Yes. She knows what she likes.  
That’s better. She’s calmer now. Feels pleasure rising up in steady waves instead of sharp rushes like before. She strokes herself rhythmically, steadily, her breathing falling into synch, tension leaking from parts of her and focusing on her sex.  
It’s ok. See. She’s not a. Lesbian. Men can still turn her on. She’s not. Bisexual. She doesn’t need think about women at all. Not about Bernie at all.  
Not about…  
Bernie in the place of her dreams. Bernie’s hands and mouth and body pressing everywhere. Bernie over her, under her, wrapped around her. Bernie meeting her eyes, reading her mind, sharing her thoughts. Bernie thinking about her, thinking about this.  
It’s a lightning bolt of desire that shoots through her body, bypasses Serena’s thoughts completely, making her fingers work frantically against her, inside her, hips buck and push, and she comes in such a rush that her brain can’t keep up. 

 

Monday 5.00am  
Serena Campbell rolls over, buries her face in her pillow and groans.  
She is not ready to face the day. Not ready to face the world. Not ready to face Bernie. And she sure as hell is not ready to face herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Oneweekobsession on Tumblr came up with a wonderful logic for how The Kiss could be part of "last week" when Bernie and Serena meet in the lift and for them not to have seen each other in that time. Basically, it is a time difference of Thursday to Monday and one of them has Friday, Saturday off and the other Saturday, Sunday. This story is based on that premise. So thank you VERY much oneweekobsession!


End file.
